The display is pretty neat, for the early 1970s. 32 characters of 5x7 LED matrices. Ceramic substrates with glued-on glass windows. Must have cost quite a bit back then.
The keyboard. Now that's what I call a keyboard controller. We don' need no steenkin keyboard micro (because we don't have any micros at all.)
All the keytops were removed, cleaned in detergent, air-blown to get the water out of cavities, then sun dried for a while. That metal mesh is an old worn-out garden sieve. It occurred to me that local birds might think keytops could be edible. I didn't want to find any mysteriously missing.
An interesting kludge under some of the keys. There were two different types - some with thick mounting posts, and some thin. It seems they discovered the thin ones were prone to splitting. So most of those have spring circlips fitted, to reinforce the plastic. But not all. A few thin ones are without the circlips, and are showing signs of splitting. I need to find some of these exact size circlips.
Also their assembly was slack - someone put a lot of the circlips too far down (up!) the posts to be any use. I moved those ones to be near the end, like the ones in the pic. First time I've needed to use circlip pliers to reassemble a keyboard.
Last pic - the keyboard nice and clean. But then the fun began.
The front facia panel has a small filament bulb, that is the power light next to the mains switch. Naturally it's blown. I'll replace it, preferably with an orange LED if possible. What's the supply voltage?
Rather than just power the machine up and measure it, I thought this would be a good time to web hunt for the service manual. Will need it anyway.
First google found
https://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?hwdoc=55Great, looks like quite a lot:
9830A - Documentation
9830TechData-5952-2348-6pages-Jan73.pdf 0.352 MB
9830TechData-5952-2348-4pages-May74.pdf 0.263 MB
9830ROMSTechData-5952-2325-6pages-Nov72.pdf 0.35 MB
9830PricingInfo-5952-9092-2pages-May75.pdf 0.087 MB
9830TechData-5952-9074-16pages-Jul76.pdf 1.092 MB
HPJournal1976Feb-9830ATerminal-7pages.pdf 0.208 MB
9830QueenslandFloodStory-4pages.pdf 0.075 MB
KeyboardVol6No1-9830inBusinessApplications-4pages-Apr74.pdf 0.143 MB
9830A-SystemTestInstructions-09830-90027-25pages-May75.pdf 0.396 MB
9830ACalculator-ServiceManual-09830-90030-140pages-Jan76.pdf 1.724 MB
9830A-DataBaseRoutinesPac-09830-76500-152pages-Jun74.pdf 1.424 MB
9830A-MathPac-09830-70000-103pages-Jul75.pdf 1.041 MB
9830-OperatingAndProgrammingManual-09830-90011-171pages-Jan73.pdf 1.761 MB
9830-SchematicsByTonyDuell-89pages.pdf 1.53 MB
9830_SurveyingPrograms_Vol1_157pages_1973.pdf 1.973 MB
9830_BAMP-30-PAC_Volume1_09830-71102_173pages_Oct74.pdf 2.699 MB
9830A_BatchTerminalPAC_09830-76510_117pages_Aug74.pdf 1.143 MB
9830A_SurveyingPAC_Volume1_09830-74009_146pages_Oct74.pdf 1.519 MB
9830_DesktopComputingPower_5952-9083_16pages_Aug76.pdf 1.795 MB
9830_AccountsReceivable_BillingPacSupplement_09830-73026_117pages_May74.pdf 1.323 MB
9830_OrderEntry-Invoicing_103pages_1974.pdf 2.023 MB
9830_QuickReference_09830-90012_5pages_May73.pdf 0.806 MB
9830A_SystemTestInstructions_09830-90032_31pages_Feb73.pdf 0.343 MB
UtilityProgramsForSorting_11141-99006_31pages_Oct74.pdf 0.208 MB
9830A_AccountsReceivable-BillingPac_09830-73024_210pages_1973.pdf 2.201 MB
9830A_SimplifiedOperatingInstructions_09830-90000_75pages_Feb73.pdf 2.888 MB
5952-8963_9830A_BAMP-CAD_System_3pages_Feb75.pdf 0.457 MB
09830-70800_9830A_StatPacVol1_86pages_Sep73.pdf 0.945 MB
09830-70850_9830A_AnalysisOFVariancePac_102pages_May74.pdf 1.017 MB
09830-70875_One-Sample_AnalysisPac_121pages_Apr74.pdf 1.275 MB
Some downloading and looking at the results later...
Oh god. All the usual abysmal stupid, incompetent & lazy scanning flaws. F-ing unbelievable. Some examples:
9830ROMSTechData-5952-2325-6pages-Nov72.pdf Pages horribly skew and out of order.
9830ACalculator-ServiceManual-09830-90030-140pages-Jan76.pdf Schematics broken up, 2-tone, images 2-tone.
9830A_SimplifiedOperatingInstructions_09830-90000_75pages_Feb73.pdf B&W (original is colour), lost page #s, skewed.
9830A-SystemTestInstructions-09830-90027-25pages-May75.pdf Pages totally out of order, lost colour, so lazy.
HPJournal1976Feb-9830ATerminal-7pages.pdf Ha ha ha! What is that on page 20? Paper was moved, culprit didn't care.
Almost all are crap. Sigh. The ones of interest are:
Operating and Programming Manual 09830-90011 171 pages Jan73 1.761 MB
Service Manual 09830-90030 140 pages Jan76 1.724 MB
System Test Instructions 09830-90032 31 pages Feb73 0.343 MB
System Test Instructions 09830-90027 25 pages May75 0.396 MB
Quick Reference 09830-90012 5 pages May73 0.806 MB
Simplified Operating Instructions 09830-90000 75 pages Feb73 2.888 MB
But the main point is, the schematics in the service manual are fragmented. (I hadn't spotted the true horror yet.)
Artek manuals has nothing for the HP 9830A.
Ditto Bitsavers.
The bama site seems to be down atm.
The plan was to stitch together the schematics into useable form. At least they have OK resolution though it is fax-mode. It's also apparent that I have some paper manuals that are not online yet, so scanning those goes on the todo list. Plus scanning the ones I have paper copies of, that ARE already online, but doing it with decent quality.
First though, the schematics. I extracted the images from the PDF with photoshop CS6, and started stitching.
First discovery: Oh good grief. Whatever auto-scan process they used, produced results AT DIFFERENT SCALES, depending on the extent of the material on that part of the foldout page. Result, see scan_fail_variable_scale.png
That's two 'pages' that should be one schematic, just abutted in photoshop.
I don't know why anyone bothers to even pretend to be scanning technical docs, if this is the stupid crap that results. It makes me laugh even harder at the "we don't need physical copies, it's all online" crowd. They are so delusional.
Also, note that the two parts don't have any overlap. In fact there's a small sliver missing. Anyway, some rescaling later, this is what I consider an almost acceptable schematic. 125-126.png
So, all good?
Ha ha ha! Aaaagh! It turns out the 'service manual' only has schematics for the kiddie-stuff PCBs. The PSU and the cassette tape interface, and minor others. All the important cards are listed as "HP blue or red stripe replacement", ie swap cards back to factory, no schematics for you.
And there isn't even a diagram of the backplane listing board numbers for slots.
Oh great. So if I want to get this unit working and nothing else turns up (I did more searching, no luck yet) I'll be debugging a custom, discrete-chips 'processor', with no doco at all about the architecture, instruction set, etc.
Well this will be fun. (And I do have another unit, that just might be working (I hope) but probably not.)
In the meantime, I want to put the case back together, so next will be just measuring the voltage to that light bulb.
To be continued.